A record number of struggling authors applied for emergency financial assistance in 2015, the Society of Authors has revealed, with applicants more than doubling between 2010 and 2015.

This year saw the highest number of applications since the society began keeping records in 1999.

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According to the society’s chief executive, Nicola Solomon, the writers applying for help are increasingly well-known.

“There are more applicants and very worthy applicants,” Solomon said. “These are people who you might call ‘proper writers’, who have made a living out of writing for their whole career. They’re not people who once wrote a poem. It’s very concerning to see the huge need these authors are in and how much support they need.”

The Society of Authors hands out £100,000 in grants each year to writers in financial hardship. Awards of £2,000 are made to long-term members of the society who are over 60 or incapacitated from work. But with half of professional writers in the UK earning less than £11,000 – a figure well under the minimum wage – the pressure on writers continues to increase.

People have been educated into the belief that books don’t cost money

Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman, author and president of the Society of Authors called the increase in applications “very worrying” and said problems began when fixed book pricing ended in the 1990s.

“Since the demise of the Net Book Agreement 20 years ago, writers’ incomes haven’t followed the strong upwards movement in profits for, for instance, Amazon,” Pullman said. “The position we’re in is that a lot of good writers – good craftsmen and craftswomen who have worked at their craft all their lives – are unable to make a living from their writing.”

With discounted books leaving authors making less money from each sale, Pullman said he would be in favour of a return to fixed pricing, but said it would be “impossible” to reinstate because “people have been educated into the belief that books don’t cost money.”

“Somebody’s got to produce the product, as they now call it, but the producers aren’t getting their proper reward,” he said.

Nicola Solomon said book sales had stayed steady, but that represented “a shrink in real terms.”

“Other people with more negotiating power are taking a bigger slice of that shrinking pie, putting a squeeze on author incomes,” she said. “We see that with publishers, whose profits haven’t decreased significantly despite the contraction in the market. And there are a host of other intermediaries who are demanding a greater share. It’s not just Amazon, who has had well-publicised battles with publishers over market share, but even agents, who used to ask for 10% but are now demanding 15%.”

With fees in other sectors of the economy also under pressure, writers are also finding it harder to supplement their income with other work. “There’s less work available in journalism and authors are increasingly expected to promote their work for free with appearances or bookshop events, leaving less time for writing.”

“Publishers are less willing to take risks, focusing on series and writers who have become brands, so the midlist are suffering terribly,” Solomon explained. “People who could get a decent advance for a book that would earn steady sales aren’t getting the support they used to, they’re getting dropped after one or two titles.”

The difficulties are made all the worse for writers coming to the end of their careers by publishers who are unwilling to let authors take back control when books fall out of print.

“Publishers are demanding all the rights and then hanging on to them, fearing that some new platform for exploiting them is just around the corner,” Solomon said, citing the case of the romance novelist Catherine Gaskin, who left her work to the Society of Authors when she died. All her work was out of print, but after the SoA reclaimed the rights they republished them and are earning £7,000 a year from each title. The 2013 ALCS study showed that 70% of authors whose rights reverted back to them went on to earn further income from them.

According to the chief executive of the Publishers Association, Richard Mollett, publishers “share the frustration of the author community” at the increasing difficulty of making a living through writing.

However, Mollett said the relationship between publishers and authors was not the principal driver of this shift, attributing the change to “deeper market factors”.

“Throughout the publishing supply chain, margins are being increasingly squeezed, particularly in the online market,” Mollett said. “One of the effects of this is a reduction in the resources available for author support.” Books are facing increasingly stiff competitions from other media, he added: “Sales of fiction books have fallen by 38% in the past five years, and in all book categories the fall has been 19%.”

Mollett said the success of a few, prolific authors helped the rest of the industry. “Publishing, like all creative industries, is able to use the revenue gained from its successes to cycle into investment in developing new titles and talent.”

“Publishers want all of the authors and titles which they help to bring to the market to succeed – that is the essence of their role,” he continued. “Of course, not every single title can achieve the same levels of success, but publishers work relentlessly with their authors to get the best possible outcome.”

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According to Solomon, publishers need to do more to look after the authors on which the industry depends. “We hear a lot from publishers about author care and how they think author care is important. But we think publishers should focus on author share, offering writers fair and better contracts,” she said.

“We need to work together as an industry to make sure that authors receive their fair share, because writers are a terribly important part of our cultural life.”